I certainly beg to differ on architecture, music, lore and spell system.
And there indeed is quite a lot of unique content that should make exploration interesting, especially if you like game´s atmosphere.
Otherwise, yep, bland, but nowadays a lot of issues can be helped with the right mods.

Originally Posted by DeepO
I certainly beg to differ on architecture, music, lore and spell system.
And there indeed is quite a lot of unique content that should make exploration interesting, especially if you like game´s atmosphere.
Otherwise, yep, bland, but nowadays a lot of issues can be helped with the right mods.

Originally Posted by DeepO
Haha, yeah the predefined spells certainly weren´t niftiest of the nifty, but there was quite a lot of use for magic outside of combat and there was a possibility to be creative with custom spells.

Yeah, and I recognise that it's a matter of taste.

Basically, for things to feel "fresh" and "exciting" for me - they need to have a feel of being handcrafted and entirely unique. The same goes for the item system, and so on.

I just couldn't get excited by stuff that I had to create myself, or stuff that was obviously based on a very primitive formula.

Wait. Explore and Morrowind in the same sentence? Everything seemed generic to me, except for the cities. Gothic, all three of them, were really exciting to explore.

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I don't really like the way the landscapes are constructed in TES III & IV. It's mostly hills and valleys and it feels like the terrain has been procedurally generated. No steep cliffs anywhere, just lots of slopes.

Looking at the Tamriel rebuilt mod, they seem to have done a much better job with world-building, it's more akin to the approach taken in the Gothics and Risen.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Wait. Explore and Morrowind in the same sentence? Everything seemed generic to me, except for the cities. Gothic, all three of them, were really exciting to explore.

I think it's one of the least generic RPG's. It's one of few games where it feels like you've really travelled somewhere and is visiting a new culture when you get to a new region. Gothic's didnt come even close, even though i did like them they werent nearly as "mystical"or felt as "epic".

Oblivion was the opposite felt very generic, was rather boring to explore since everything was mainly a forrest with towns thrown in + the Oblivion gates (which was very dull).

Morrowind doesn't get enough praise You left out the expansions though, one thing I feel was done to near perfection in Morrowind.

Tribunal gave us a nice long dungeon romp with improved dialogue and quests and Bloodmoon took us back outdoors with a whole island with a distinctive environment from the rest of the game (SNOWY FORESTS!!!) and werewolves.

Morrowind wasn't perfect and it definitely took a bunch of mods to get it closer to perfection (which mods depends on what the individual player felt was lacking) but I also feel that even with the vanilla game, both expansions went a long way towards making up for some of the original game's shortcomings. So together it makes for one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

Originally Posted by bemushroomed
I think it's one of the least generic RPG's. It's one of few games where it feels like you've really travelled somewhere and is visiting a new culture when you get to a new region.

Oblivion was the opposite felt very generic, was rather boring to explore since everything was mainly a forrest with towns thrown in + the Oblivion gates (which was very dull).

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Appreciating unstructured wandering or unstructured whatever is one of the keys to liking Morrowind. Which also explains the huge modding base.

But it does get very repetitive after you've explored everything… Atmosphere and lore kept it interesting.

If I replayed I'd add some of the new huge landmass mods.

I absolutely adore unstructured wandering

I played Morrowind for countless hours, hoping to get excited.

I have no idea what people are talking about, when they claim it's not generic. I saw AT LEAST 60% of the world - and everything was incredibly bland or brown. Sure, you could encounter a few stiff and insane NPCs, or some incredibly annoying monsters with no feedback during combat - but anything unique?

I guess both Jemy and I - must have been INCREDIBLY unlucky in terms of not finding all this stuff you're talking about.

The landscapes did have variety, but within a limited color palette for the most part.

You'd think we've played 2 completely different games with the same name, and I'm not exaggerating here. That's my clear memory of playing the game.

Just as Jemy said, the lore was presented like browsing a wikipedia page, and the combat was absolutely atrocious.

Plenty of dungeons, but they had nothing to offer but endless tableware and samey designs.

If there were artifacts, and I'm sure there were, they were certainly well hidden - and I'm not about to explore 50 identical cookie cutter dungeons, just to find a single artifact.